Envoy to Afghanistan goes missing

KHAIBER AGENCY—Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan is feared abducted with his driver after going missing on Monday in an insurgency-hit Pakistani tribal region while driving to Kabul, officials said. Tariq Azizuddin went missing in the Khyber tribal district, one of seven semi-autonomous regions along the Afghan border where Islamist militants have carried out attacks.
The Pakistan embassy in Kabul said it last had contact with the ambassador at around 11:30 am (0630 GMT) and was trying to find out what had happened. “We know that he was coming from (the northwestern Pakistani city of) Peshawar to Kabul and we lost contact with him. We are trying our best to find out what happened,” officials said.
The chief administrative official in Khyber, Rasool Khan Wazir, said security forces raised the alarm when the envoy failed to reach the main border post between the two countries at Torkham. “The search was launched when Afghan authorities informed us that he had failed to reach,” Wazir said, adding that the envoy was traveling in an official car with his driver, who is also missing, he said.
Officials at another checkpost had earlier ordered the ambassador’s car to stop “because they saw some local people sitting in the front seat. But they did not stop,” Wazir said. “Where they are we don’t know. We have launched a search,” Wazir added. The main road between Pakistan and Afghanistan was closed for search operations.
`Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan was missing and feared kidnapped in a tribal border region, state television quoted the foreign ministry as saying Monday. Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin was heading to the Afghan capital, Kabul, from the tribal district of Khyber when he went missing, Pakistan Television quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. Islamist militants have carried out attacks in the region.
Sources have told the BBC that the ambassador, Tariq Azizuddin, was kidnapped in the Khyber tribal agency close to the Afghan border. The Pakistani embassy in Kabul says contact was lost with Mr Azizuddin at around 1045 local time (0645 GMT). Many areas in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are strongholds of pro-Taleban militants. The BBC’s Alastair Leithead in Afghanistan says that police in Pakistan’s Khyber Agency said they believed that Mr Azizuddin had been kidnapped.
There were reports on Pakistani television of his car going through a checkpoint without stopping. The border areas are militant strongholds Hundreds of people have been kidnapped in the dangerous border region in recent years - four Pakistani Red Cross workers went missing in the same area a few days ago.
Our correspondent says that apart from roads, the Khyber Agency is outside the control of the Pakistani government.
Security officials told the Reuters news agency that the envoy was due to have changed cars at the border, but did not reach the frontier. Pakistani foreign office Spokesman Muhammad Sadiq said that Mr Azizuddin was going to Kabul from Peshawar by road when he disappeared.
“We are looking into the matter and at this stage we cannot deny or confirm the kidnapping of the ambassador,” he said.

—Agencies